Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 22, 2007 5:36:16 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Big Brother Inc (1/2)
Just Who Does the CIA's Work?
CIA personnel wait as President George W. Bush visits
CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, March 20, 2001.
By Robert Baer
TIME, Apr. 20, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1613011,00.html
With Baghdad continuing to burn and the CIA still broken, you would
think there would be more important issues for the Democrats and
the White House to fight over than whether or not to make the
intelligence budget public. But that is precisely what is at issue
in a nasty spat currently going on between Senate Democrats and
Republicans over the 2007 intelligence authorization.
President Bush and Senate Republicans say they object to the
Democrats' draft authorization because of provisions like making
the overall intelligence budget public and creating a statutory
inspector general for the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence. Bush said last Thursday that unless these and other
provisions that add Congressional oversight of the intelligence
community are stripped from the authorization, he will veto it.
But does anyone seriously believe Osama bin Laden would be deterred
from attacking the United States if he found out we are spending
more on intelligence than everyone thinks? I called around to check
with my former colleagues. "Who cares whether the intelligence
budget is $25 or $75 billion?" a recently retired CIA officer told
me, bringing up only one real problem that bothers him. "The entire
budget is being flushed down the drain — into contractors' pockets."
He has a point. With contractors rumored to make up 50-60% of the
CIA's workforce, it is difficult to tell who is running the place.
The contractors' mantra is that the CIA needs more contractors to
fix it. Management is too beleaguered and on the defensive to do
what is really necessary — rebuild the CIA from top to bottom.
My ex-colleague went on to say that the problem is most evident in
Iraq. Today in Baghdad a private contracting company, which I will
leave unnamed, decides where CIA officers can go and whom they can
see. This may sound like inside baseball to a lot of people, but
what it means is the contractor is in charge, essentially
determining who the CIA's sources are. And the contractor makes no
bones about it: his goal is to hold on to his contract, not whether
the CIA gets Iraq right or not.
I keep hearing other horror stories out of the CIA. How it
continues to hemorrhage experienced field officers, how the place
is demoralized, how the Pentagon still rides roughshod over it. I
am told that it has gotten so bad that the CIA has stopped
cooperating with some parts of the military because they're
involved in activities that violate statutes that govern the CIA.
I asked the CIA if it was losing people and whether the percentage
of contractors is in fact that high. In an e-mail statement, a CIA
spokesman wrote me, "If you're going to write about your former
colleagues, please get some facts. The agency's total attrition
rate — retirements, resignations, and separations — is low, running
under 5%. To me, that says good things about morale. Your figure
for contractors is well off the mark, and you can expect that
population to decrease as our force of staff officers continues to
grow. As for Iraq, agency officers lead the agency presence there
and make the key operational decisions. Finally, relations with the
military are strong, but we are working to make them better still.
An intelligence officer constantly evaluates his sources — yours
appear to need improvement."
I guess, like the budget, the percentage of contractors in the CIA
is a well-guarded secret. If the Senate asks for the figure, the
CIA might not have the authority to obtain it.
In the meantime, no one at the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI, and the
Federal Aviation Administration has been fired or reprimanded for
9/11. Likewise, no one has come up with a workable plan to make
sure the intelligence community does not produce another flawed
National Intelligence Estimate, one that justifies a war with Iran.
Congress is not an ideal institution to oversee the intelligence
community, but it is all we have. And in order to help it do a
better job, we probably do need to give it more oversight. At the
same time I would feel better if it were taking on real issues of
concern, not just worrying about how much we've been overpaying for
bad intelligence. When the bill comes due, the price tag will be
the least of our worries.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle
East, is the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel
Blow the House Down
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